LAISSEZ FAIRE ECONOMICS IN 2014

Sometimes I wonder what it would be like in the United States if we were living in a free market economy. I don’t know of anyone who believes that would be a good thing. Even the most adamant Republicans are quick to say they do not like government regulations but they don’t agree that laissez faire economics is good—they want some regulations but are unwilling to outline what those regulations might be beyond those that protect their property rights. Nonetheless, there is mantra thrown over all business transaction, which is no government restricts to the way they do business and no taxes.

Beginning in 1980, corporate fortunes started an inflationary phase that they have been able to only to maintain but to build on ever since. They have been so successful that “corporations”, not the people but corporations, are living in the equivalent of a laissez faire environment. I make this assertion based on the idea that corporations and not people control the government. We have a veneer of government regulation of corporations. Big business spend million dollars every day to disembowel hundreds of regulations, while at the same time they spend millions of dollars publically complaining about how regulations are hurting their businesses. They have spent trillions of dollars since the 1980s to prevent Congress from enacting regulations and those few regulation that have been approved, they spend more dollars to defund agencies created or prevent appointment of people to run those agencies. In addition, they find other way to corrupt the agencies that are supposed to regulate them. As an extreme example, consider #North Carolina; what is essentially the Governors campaign advisors are corporate lawyers in the process of creating a “new” corporation to function as the State Department of Commerce. Need I mention the major political donor is the State Budget Director?

It is not just my state. Theodore Roosevelt started the #United States Department of Commerce to regulate business in about 1904, and by 2007, corporations operated it; therefore, it regulates nothing. The Environmental Protection Agency (EPA) run by corporations is dysfunctional; the BP Gulf Oil disaster is a prime example. All the coal tar spill and coalmine deaths, and explosions at chemical plants are happening because there is no one to enforce the laws. Across the reaches of government, corporations are operating behind a pretense of law. They are lawless

Consider the part taxes plays in politics. Neither Democrat nor Republican dares to be an advocate to increase taxes; you the voters will never elect them to office. All of a sudden, you are willing to consider gambling and marijuana as sources of income, in one state they have prostitution as well; like the girls, you do what you do because you know the government needs the money. Consider the ridiculousness of openly changing laws intended to prevent these amoral things from happening; it is re-defining morality.  

Seriously consider this; corporations are bitterly complaining about regulations that have no meaning: they do this because they want more when they already unrestricted, the quintessence of greed. Corporations prevent laws from being made, ignore them when Congress passes them, or prevent them from being enforced then forces you to sellout your moral values to pay for the government you know you need.

I have been fooling my self; I no longer have to wonder what it would be like to live in a #laissez faire economy; that is what I am doing—a #Ronald Reagan made nightmare—a #plutocracy; the money is all at the top. 

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